Castle Kindergarten - Haswell

🌿Happy 50th Birthday to our wonderful Baby Room Senior Early Years Practitioner, Olivia! 🌿

Wishing you the happiest of birthdays from all of us at the nursery! Thank you for your endless care, kindness, patience and dedication to our babies and their families. Your passion for early years shines through every day, and the love and support you give to both the children and your colleagues never goes unnoticed.

We hope you have a fantastic day celebrating—you truly deserve it! Thank you for everything you do. ❤️

🌿 To Our Wonderful Nursery Families 🌿

As we come to the end of another amazing year, we just wanted to say a huge thank you from all of the staff here at nursery.

What a truly special final week we've shared together! We've made so many wonderful memories—from our exciting ice cream van visit, water fights, celebrating at our graduation ceremony, enjoying our Teddy Bears' Picnic, relaxing with a movie day, and sharing plenty of laughter, hugs, happy tears, and thoughtful presents along the way.

It has been a privilege to watch your children grow in confidence, curiosity, kindness, and independence. Seeing them learn, laugh, make friendships, and prepare for their next adventures has been the greatest reward.

To all of our children moving on to school, we wish you every success—you'll always have a special place in our hearts. ❤️

Term time only children returning in September- Have a wonderful summer filled with love, laughter, and precious family time. Stay safe, make lots of happy memories, and we'll see you soon, back at nursery on the 8th September 2026🌿

And to all of our children who will be attending throughout the summer holidays, we can't wait to continue the fun! We have lots of exciting activities, adventures, and opportunities planned to make wonderful memories together. We'll keep learning, laughing, exploring, and growing every day, and we look forward to sharing a summer full of smiles, friendship, and new experiences with you all. ☀️

Last day of term is Monday 20th July !!

With love and best wishes,

Castle Kindergarten Haswell Team 🌿

🌿 Great British Summer Savings - Information for Parents and Carers 🌿

We would like to make parents and carers aware of the Government's Great British Summer Savings scheme, which runs from 25 June to 1 September 2026.

The scheme includes:

🌞Reduced VAT on eligible children's meals in restaurants.

🌞Reduced VAT on eligible children's and family tickets for cinemas, theatres, concerts, exhibitions and many attractions.

🌞Free bus travel throughout August for children aged 5–15 in England.

To find participating venues and offers near you, visit the Government's Summer Savings website and use the attraction finder:
https://summersavings.gov.uk

We hope this information is helpful and that families are able to make the most of the savings available over the summer holidays ☀️☀️☀️☀️

Summer Savings — find your summer offer Discounted family days out and meals near you this summer.

With the warmer weather here, we'd like to remind all parents and carers to help us keep everyone safe in the sun.

Please ensure your child arrives at nursery with:
☀️ A bottle of SPF 30 (or higher) sunscreen to keep at nursery
☀️ A sun hat (with child's name on)
☀️ Ensure your child has a water bottle at nursery (with child's name on)
☀️ Appropriate clothing - lightweight, light-coloured and loose-fitting clothes allow skin to breathe, reflect heat and create airflow around the body, helping children stay cooler.
☀️ Lots of spare clothing in children's bags (including underwear and socks) as children will be enjoying lots of water play to cool down.

The wellbeing of our children is always our top priority. During the warmer weather, we'll be taking extra steps to ensure everyone stays safe, happy and comfortable throughout the day.

When enjoying the outdoors, we will:
🌳 Plan outdoor play for the cooler parts of the day where possible and make use of shaded areas and sun canopies to keep children protected from the sun.
💦 Provide lots of exciting water play experiences to help children stay cool. We will also ensure children take regular hydration breaks from play to stay hydrated.
🧴 Apply sun cream 20 minutes before children go outside and reapply sun cream throughout the day, following our nursery Sun Care Policy.
👒 Ensure children wear their sun hats whenever they are outside.

Inside the nursery, we will:
💨 Keep rooms well ventilated using open windows and fans where appropriate.
💧 Encourage children to drink water regularly and refill their water bottles throughout the day.
🌡️ Monitor room temperatures to help maintain a comfortable environment.
👀 Closely observe children for any signs of overheating, dehydration or heat-related illness.

Thank you for your support in helping us keep all our children safe while they enjoy outdoor play in the sunshine! 🌞💛

🧁 It's bake sale day! 🧁

From old school cake to kinder brownies... there's so many delicious treats to choose from! All we ask is that you make a cash donation in return for a baked good of your choice. Enjoy!

Children and staff attending nursery on Wednesday 17th June are invited to wear red, white, blue or your favourite football shirt to celebrate England’s World Cup match together!

We’ll be enjoying football-themed activities throughout the day, celebrating teamwork, playing football in the sun and making flags.

❤️💙🤍

🐝 World Bee Day at Castle Kindergarten Haswell🐝

We celebrated World Bee Day by offering the children a week full of exciting activities and learning all about the wonderful world of bees. 🌼🍯

Throughout the week, the children explored why bees are so important to our environment and discovered lots of fun bee facts, including:

🐝 Bees help pollinate the plants that grow many of the foods we eat
🐝 A single bee can visit up to 5,000 flowers in one day
🐝 Bees communicate with each other by doing a special “waggle dance”
🐝 Honeybees work together as a team inside their hive

The children enjoyed creative crafts, sensory play, stories, and discussions, all helping them learn how we can protect these amazing pollinators. 💛

We loved seeing the children so engaged, curious, and excited to learn about these tiny creatures that make such a big difference to our world! 🐝

🌿 Reminder to our families that are term time only, children break up this Friday (22nd May) and will return on Monday 1st June.🌿

🌿Nursery will also be closed on Monday 25th May for the bank holiday.🌿

Last week we were delighted to host our first PVI Network event through the Northern Lights Early Years Stronger Practice Hub : North East

It was a wonderful opportunity to welcome fellow early years professionals into our beautiful nursery, share ideas, showcase our learning environments, and chat with our amazing staff team.

Thank you to all who took the time to come along, and the wonderful feedback we received. Collaboration and professional connections are so valuable within early years 💚

We would also like to say a very special thank you to our incredible staff for everything they do each and every day. Their hard work, creativity, dedication, and care are what make our environment such a warm, inspiring, and nurturing place for children to learn and grow. We are so proud of the passion and commitment they show to our children and families every day. ✨